So, lots of ladies in music have played with alter egos. Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, and Neko Case have made careers for themselves writing and recording songs as multiple characters, playing with gender roles in the process. Tori Amos released American Doll Posse in 2007, wherein she recorded and subsequently toured as a five-member girl group, each member having their own distinct look and personality modelled after Greek goddesses.
I keep thinking about female musicians’ use of alter egos alongside Elana Levine’s reading of the Showtime series The United States of Tara, which is written by Diablo Cody and stars Toni Collette as a working wife and mom with multiple personality disorder. Levine reads the show as a response to third-wave feminism’s interest in the multiplicity of identity.
I find this concept useful for my preoccupations with gender performance in music culture, particularly in thinking about Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce and Bat for Lashes’ Pearl. Click on the artist’s name to watch each music video.
Bat for Lashes
“Pearl’s Dream”
Two Suns
Directed by Nima
Beyoncé
“Diva”
I Am Sasha Fierce
Directed by Melina Matsoukas
Thinking about the multiplicity of identity in conjuction with women of color opens up and complicates issues of identity even more (Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan is British and of mixed ethnic and racial hertiage — Pakastani on her father’s side, Caucasian on her mother’s side; Beyoncé is African American who is of French descent on her mother’s side). Khan’s Pearl wears a blonde wig and reads as white. Beyoncé’s Sasha has a metallic glove associated with robots and cyborgs, who are often racially coded as white. That these personae are shown alongside the artists’ “true” identities is also important, suggesting that they are both performances and extensions of themselves.
